British cartoonist and artist
Kate Charlesworth (born 1950) is a British cartoonist and artist who has produced comics and illustrations since the 1970s. Her work has appeared in LGBT publications such as The Pink Paper, Gay News, Strip AIDS, Dyke's Delight, and AARGH, as well as The Guardian, The Independent, and New Internationalist. Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury Publishing) calls her a "notable by-and-for lesbian" cartoonist.[1]
In 2015, her graphic novel Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (with Mary and Bryan Talbot) was included in a list published by The Guardian of the "top 10 books about revolutionaries".[2] Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, her autobiography and history of gay and lesbian culture in England and Scotland from the end of World War II to the present, was published in 2018.[3]
Early life
Charlesworth was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England in 1950 to Joan and Harold Charlesworth.[4][5] Her parents ran a local corner shop during her childhood. She attended Wombwell High School in Barnsley and attended Manchester College of Art and Design to study graphics and stage design from 1968 to 1973.
Charlesworth is an only child.[4]
Career
Charlesworth's career in comics began in 1973, when she pitched a daily strip called "Twice Nightly" with two gay characters and suffragette themes to the Manchester Evening News.[5][6] The strip ran for six months. In 1976 she moved to London, after which she was published in gay and lesbian newspapers including The Pink Paper, Gay News, and Sappho, LGBT comic books including Strip AIDS, Dyke's Delight, and AARGH, and mainstream publications like The Guardian and City Limits.[5][7] Her strips and cartoons often addressed contemporary issues in the lesbian and wider LGBT communities, including presentation, socio-political issues including oppressive legislation, and stereotypes in a humorous manner. In 1995 her work appeared in Dyke’s Delight issues 1 and 2, introducing some of her most popular characters, including Auntie Studs, to an American audience.[8]
She has produced science comics for New Scientist ("Life, the Universe and (Almost) Everything") and The Independent, as well as illustrations for several books published by the National Museums of Scotland.[9]
She describes her art style as not overly cartoonish or caricature, but emotionally realistic. In an interview she stated that she uses photographic reference and tries to get in the mind of each character to accurately portray their emotions on the page.[10]
More recently, Charlesworth has shifted to working on graphic novels. She illustrated Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary Talbot, published in 2014. Her illustrations were highly praised by Neel Mukherjee in The Guardian as "beautifully executed in black-and-white, with perfectly judged touches of colour."[11] In 2011 she contributed to Blank Slate’s Nelson, a collaborative graphic novel with 54 British comic artists.[12] Nelson was chosen as The Guardian's graphic novel of the month by Rachel Cooke and one of 2011's best graphic novels by The Times.[13][14] Charlesworth spent four years working on her autobiographical work Sensible Footwear: A Girl's Guide, which was published in 2019.[10]
Charlesworth has also worked as a storyboard artist for shows including Bob the Builder (Hot Animation), Pingu (Hot Animation), and Timmy Time (Aardman Animations).[15][16] She has created several cards for Cath Tate Cards, run by fellow cartoonist and friend Cath Tate.[17][18][19][20] She created the CD cover for Fast Talk Archived 29 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine by Kay Grant and Alex Ward.[21] She also produces various forms of 3-D art, including birthday cards, maps, board games, and shadow boxes, featured on her website.[22]
Her future plans include a joint comic project with her partner, Dianne, as well as moving into different mediums, including animation.[10]
Personal life
Charlesworth is a lesbian and has stated that she embraced her identity as a dyke in college when she entered a relationship. She has opined that she feels the lesbian community of the time heavily self-policed behavior and look, which prevented her from fully realizing her identity and influenced much of her work.[10][4]
Charlesworth has been politically active in British and Scottish politics and pushes for equal rights. When Clause 28 of the Local Government Act was being pushed in 1988, aiming to ban the promotion of and education about homosexuality by local authorities, including schools, Charlesworth teamed up with Viv Quillin, Cath Jackson, and Cath Tate, three other local cartoonists, to produce a series of postcards to campaign against it.[20] More recently, she has notably been outspoken against Brexit and President Trump, arguing that their popularity represent a backslide for LGBT rights.[23]
She has also been involved in many efforts to increase awareness of LGBT history.[10] In 2006 she illustrated a guide for a walking tour of 500 years of Edinburgh’s LGBT history, published by the LGBT Centre for Health and Wellbeing and Remember When.[24] In the same year she participated in the City of Edinburgh Council's "Rainbow City" exhibition at the City Art Centre.[6][25] She also participates in Edinburgh's Loud and Proud choir, which sang at Equal Marriage lobbies of the Scottish Parliament.[6]
She currently lives with Dianne, her partner of 13 years, a dog, and a cat in the Borders in Scotland.[4]
